As I've said before, I really respect Paul Simon.
He has two gifts where he could have had just one: the ability to write a really catchy pop song, AND the ability to write songs that feel real and touch people's hearts.
This is why I have long thought that if I were to meet a space alien who wanted to learn what humanity was all about, I'd make them listen to Graceland.
(That's also a self-serving desire because, hey, come on, hey, who wouldn't want to say they once listened to Graceland with a space alien?
Right.
I am picturing a Twilight-Zone-style alien here, like one with a mid-range suit and pomade in his hair.
I know this all sounds 100% crazy, but these are just the things I think about when I sit on my couch at night.)
In any case, I have written about Paul Simon before here ("Something So Right") and here ("Graceland", hosted on my friend's blog Mom And Not Mom).
And I'm back to it again.
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Two interesting facts about this song:
1. The phrase that Paul Simon originally wanted to build a song around was "Going Home", but he replaced it with "Kodachrome" because it was unique and had more possibility.
I find that really fascinating. I know how it is when you start with the shell of an idea and then start writing and realize you've ended up somewhere completely different, but I find the original idea always has at least some resonance with the finished product. So it's interesting to think of the phrase "going home" -- which always sounds poignant to me, for whatever that says about me -- in relationship to this song.
2. The line "and everything looks worse in black and white" was how he sung it in 1973; in 1991 he performed it as "everything looks better in black and white". If that's not an interesting comment on age, the passing of time, and cultural shift, I don't know what is.
Let's listen to it.
The song: Paul Simon, "Kodachrome"; 1971
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Like many of Paul Simon's songs, this one is a relatively complex metaphor and when I try to unravel it I sometimes confuse myself. I know, however, that it's about memory. This is a subject that means something to me.
Ask me in a week and I'll probably think differently, but what I think right now is that this song is about the ability to create and retain memories without being consumed by them. What I might also call "living life", which sounds glib but I don't mean it to be. Life is uncomfortable. It feels weird and unpleasant a lot of the time, and I think it's easy to try to dodge those feelings with fantasy, or undue nostalgia, or denial.
Joan Didion says, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live. . . We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."
I think she and Paul are really onto something there.
Yrs,
AW
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